The world is a unique and fascinating place. What makes this so is the abundant amount of cultures one can find when travelling the globe. This reading was about how the various languages of the world keep the diverse range of cultures that exist, and that if these languages are not preserved all will be lost. This, however i believe to be very untrue.
I do agree that differences in culture are fantastic and keep the world interesting, however being fearful of losing languages is a little absurd. All current languages that exist now must come from somewhere; usually they are hybrids of previously existing languages. Some of these previous languages may have died out. For example there is a definite Latin influence on the English language, however Latin is no longer used as a conversational language. Is this detrimental to the world? Not at all, because like an organ donor, Latin was able to give parts of itself to various other languages. So no latin no longer exists, but pieces of it live on in other languages.
What it seems is that the author is afraid of change. This i believe is a very common thing for humans to experience. Humans like patterns and consistency and things out of the ordinary tend to be intimidating or scary. However if it wasn't for change nothing would have ever progressed and the world would go from being fascinating to being pretty mundane and boring. It is important to recognize that all languages the author is talking about preserving did in fact come from somewhere else, and one day millions of years from now new languages will exist and they will have the old languages like English that are no longer in existence to thank for their birth.
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